


As Warm As Moonlight

by DKNC



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DKNC/pseuds/DKNC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just over a year past her arrival in Winterfell, Catelyn wonders if she will ever be accepted as a Lady of the North and if she’ll ever truly be warm again. Distraught and angry one evening, she finds herself on a moonlit path which may somewhere rather unexpected.</p><p>Written for the Game of Ships "Ships in the NIght" Challenge for the pictorial prompt of a snowy path in the woods lit by moonlight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Warm As Moonlight

Catelyn was lost. She would have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it if she hadn’t been so cold. What sort of Lady becomes lost within the walls of her own castle?

 _It is my castle,_ she thought, equal parts possessive and bitter about the truth of that statement. _Whether I wish it to be or not! I am the Lady of Winterfell, and Robb will one day be its Lord._

Robb, not Jon. Not the boy with her husband’s face. The boy whose mother the cooks had been speculating about when she came upon them in the kitchens tonight. No names were mentioned, of course. She hadn’t heard a name whispered in more than a year. Not since she’d asked her lord husband if his bastard’s mother had been the Lady Ashara Dayne and he’d shouted at her in cold fury until she told him the names of every servant who’d mentioned the lady. Not one of those servants remained in Winterfell after that, and no one else was foolish enough to risk their lord’s ire on the subject of his bastard or the bastard’s mother. Catelyn certainly hadn’t mentioned it ever again.

The moon came out from behind a cloud and lit the path ahead of her so that it shone silver white, and the branches of the trees which lined it appeared to be covered in crystal jewels rather than ordinary snow. It was beautiful, she was forced to admit. But its beauty was false. As false as the stupid path itself. True beauty was warm, and nothing in this place held any warmth for her save Robb.

 _That isn’t entirely true,_ a small voice reminded her. _Your chambers are warm. And some of the people here are as well._ Old Nan, for instance, smiled widely whenever Catelyn approached her. She never tired of telling Catelyn stories of the North, and Catelyn never tired of hearing them. These were the stories her son would grow up with just as she had been raised on the legends of the Riverlands. As Robb’s mother, she needed to know them well enough to tell them to him herself. 

Old Nan was warm, and Maester Luwin seemed to like her well enough as well. Her lord husband had at least seen fit to give her a free hand in running the household at Winterfell, and the maester abided by her instructions in such matters. He seemed to respect her. The steward, however . . . Catelyn frowned a bit, thinking upon Vayon Poole. He was a capable man and always courteous. But he never failed to find ways to make it clear to her when she asked for anything to be done differently that this was “not how Lady Lyarra would do things.”

 _Lady Lyarra’s been dead a good many years_ , Catelyn thought now. _Dead before I was ever betrothed to Brandon, much less wed to Lord Eddard, and it would seem the castle’s had no lady at all since her death._ Sometimes, Catelyn wondered about her lord husband’s dead sister. She knew little about her save what all in the Seven Kingdoms knew. Betrothed to Robert Baratheon, she had been kidnapped by Prince Rhaegar and locked away somewhere in Dorne, only to die before Lord Eddard could bring her home after the Targaryens were defeated. When Catelyn’s own lady mother had died, she had stepped into the role of Lady of Riverrun in spite of her young age. Lyanna Stark had been still younger when her mother had died, but it seemed that she never took on any responsibilities of the Lady of Winterfell even as she grew older. Catelyn would like to know more about the girl whose short, tragic life had so dramatically affected her own, but her lord husband would speak of his sister no more readily than he would of his bastard’s mother. At least not to her.

Not that he spoke of a great many things to her at all. They spoke of Robb most easily. For however much the man loved the bastard boy and his mysterious mother, Catelyn could not accuse him of not loving his trueborn son and heir as well. Robb was the one thing they truly shared, and depending upon her mood she found herself either thankful or resentful of that. They spoke of Winterfell, too. Her lord husband obviously loved his home, and she thought he still found himself sometimes amazed to be back here after being so long in the Eyrie and then away at war. Some evenings, as they sat beside each other in the Great Hall, he’d even ask her of her childhood at Riverrun and listen as if her answers truly interested him.

He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t even cold, really. Not anymore. But he wasn’t warm. He treated her with every courtesy, even when he came to her bed—which he did dutifully once a week except when her moonblood was upon her. He was careful of her then. He never hurt her and even sought to give her some pleasure in the act although she found it difficult to relax into his touch. Her body did often seem to burn with heat and yearning from somewhere deep inside when he moved against her, inside her-- especially when he touched his hands and his lips to the most sensitive places on her flesh. Sometimes that heat even leapt into a sudden inferno that left her shaking and panting, feeling as if she had somehow come out of her own skin and shattered into a thousand tiny flashes of light—not unlike the tiny points of moonlight that shone upon the snow all around her.

She felt heat then, yes. But no lasting warmth. Afterward, he would roll off her and thank her politely, as if she had performed some service for him such as pouring his ale or mending his cloak. He would bid her good night and leave her wondering if he found her too wanton or not warm enough or simply not the woman he wanted. He always treated her as a lady. But he did not treat her as his lady, and precisely why that bothered her, she wasn’t certain. But it did.

And she blamed him at least in part for the way the others here treated her, for they took their cues from him. Always courteous. Always “Lady Stark this” and “Lady Stark that,” but for all they gave her the title, they treated her more as a respected guest than their liege lady, and she couldn’t stand it. She could see the warmth in these Northerners in the way they smiled and spoke with each other. She could even see it in her solemn faced husband when he tossed Robb into the air or when he used to laugh with Benjen. But for all her efforts, Winterfell remained cold to her, and she knew not how to change that. And she must. For Robb’s sake, she must.

 _I am the Lady of Winterfell,_ she thought furiously again, standing there in the middle of the path that wasn’t truly a path for it simply faded away into the trees no matter which way she walked upon it. She knew that if she simply chose a direction and walked straight, picking her way through the densely packed trees, she would eventually come to the wall and then she could follow the wall until she came to a gate, but it irritated her that she didn’t know her way out. She’d been so pleased to stumble upon this path because it looked like the one she’d taken initially as she entered the gate of the godswood and walked deeper into it than she’d ever gone. Now, of course, she knew it wasn’t, and tears stung her eyes as she felt both angry and foolish.

She shouldn’t have come here. She didn’t like this place at all. The trees grew so closely together that it was dark and dreary here even in the light of day, and the heart tree was the most terrifying looking weirwood she had ever seen or even imagined. It felt old and haunted and altogether foreign. Only she was the foreigner here, and she knew it. That’s what had driven her here after the scene in the kitchens. _I am the Lady of Winterfell!_ she’d shouted at the startled cooks and maids. That thought had been at the front of her mind as she’d fled, and so she’d come here, determined to conquer her fears of the one place in Winterfell that made her secretly fear they were all right about her—that she could not truly be a Lady of Winterfell after all.

 _They’d laugh to see me now,_ she thought. She wondered if they’d laughed at her anyway once she’d left. She’d come to thank them for preparing such an excellent meal. Some traders had brought salted fish and she’d given the cooks a receipt for a stew served often in Riverrun. Salted fish was never as good as fresh, of course, but in a stew it could work quite well. She had never made it herself, but the head cook at Riverrun was literate and had written down instructions for many of Catelyn’s favorite dishes as a parting gift when she’d come north, and Catelyn had shared them with the cooks here. They’d viewed her offering with visible suspicion poorly masked by courteous gratitude and never prepared even one of the Riverrun dishes unless she specifically ordered it. Even then they’d muttered about “strange southron tastes” when they’d thought she wasn’t listening. 

They’d done an excellent job with the stew, however. Her lord husband had commented three separate times upon how delicious his meal was, and many others had spoken praise for it as well so she’d gone to the kitchens to express her pleasure and gratitude to her cooks. There she’d discovered a number of the kitchen workers washing up and discussing the origins of Jon Snow. As always they commented upon his appearance with the older cooks declaring the bastard to be the very image of Lord Eddard as a wee lad. That led several young women to speculate that his mother must have been a Northern lass for there wasn’t a bit of the south in the boy—not like young Lord Robb who had all the look of the southron Lady.

Something inside Catelyn had broken then. The tight control she had held over her anger and fear and resentment at the bastard boy’s being as beloved in Winterfell as her own son, possibly more so, slipped away. Her determination to win these people with courtesy and honor and attention to her duty fell away as well, as she heard them dare to say her son was somehow less Stark than a bastard with no true name at all.

“I am the Lady of Winterfell!” she had shouted, stepping completely through the door so they could see her. She’d been shaking. “I am the Lady of Winterfell, wife to your liege lord, and mother to your future lord. I will not have you constantly questioning me, and I will not have you wagging your tongues in spiteful gossip about my lord husband or my son within my home.”

They’d stared at her in stunned silence. She’d never shouted at them in rage before. She’d admonished them or corrected them, yes, but she’d never lost her temper. She’d never allowed herself to do so. She was still shaking when the head cook finally found the courage to stammer an apology.

“Forgive us, milady. We meant no disrespect. We were only . . .”

“You were only speculating about whom the Lord of Winterfell takes to his bed and whether or not my son has enough Northern blood for your liking. And you have no right to speak of any such thing!”  
Embarrassed by her own outburst, Catelyn had turned to go, but the voice of one of the younger kitchen girls had stopped her. 

“Milady, please . . .” the girl had said in a pleading voice, and Catelyn had turned around to see a girl of about five and ten who’d fallen to her knees looking up at her. She was a slim, rather pretty girl with thick brown hair braided down her back. Distress was written on her pretty face, her Northern face, and Catelyn had frowned. _Did Jon Snow’s mother look like you? Are you the sort of girl my husband wants in his bed?_ It was an ill-tempered thought, and even in her anger, Catelyn knew it was unfair. Whatever else she might think about her husband, he gave her no reason to think he’d taken anyone else into his bed here in Winterfell.

“Don’t tell Lord Eddard, milady, please,” the girl had begged, and Catelyn had felt the rage inside her freeze into a colder kind of fury. 

“Get up,” she’d told the girl shortly. “When you speak of my lord husband, you will refer to him as Lord Stark. He is the Lord of Winterfell, and I expect you to give him the respect due that title.” The girl had looked terrified, but she did get back up to her feet. None of the others had spoken or moved as Catelyn regarded them silently a moment. “Do not forget yourselves,” she’d said finally. “And do not for one moment forget me. Because wherever I was born, I am now the Lady of Winterfell.”

Then she had turned away again, fleeing the kitchen first without thought of a destination and then with the sudden desire to conquer the godswood. Which now seemed to have conquered her instead. She looked up at the moon glumly, thinking that she should be able to use its position in the sky to find her way back to the gate she wanted. She’d never been lost in the woods near Riverrun. Not once. No matter how far she wandered. But in this ancient, forbidding wood, she was completely turned around and at a loss within the walls of her own castle.

“I am the Lady of Winterfell,” she said out loud in desolate voice, mocking her own pride and hopes. The old gods who held sway in this place didn’t seem to know her as any such thing.

“You are, indeed.”

She jumped at the sound of the soft, deep voice behind her. For one terrifying moment, she actually thought the old gods of the Starks had answered her, but of course she knew who it was. She turned slowly to face her lord husband. Gods only knew what he thought of her if he’d heard about her tirade in the kitchen, but she would not refuse to look at him. She still had some pride.

“Did you have need of me, my lord?” she asked him courteously, as if he’d interrupted her on a stroll rather than discovered her wandering lost in the godswood long after she should have been back in her chambers for the night.

His face gave little away as usual, but she almost thought she saw a hint of a smile at her words before he swallowed and said seriously, “I have more need of you than I think you realize, my lady. But I have come to ask your forgiveness.”

Everything in his words surprised her, but she asked him about only the last ones. “My forgiveness? Whatever for, my lord?”

He frowned. “I am not blind to the dishonor I have done you, Catelyn.” His use of her name seemed at odds with his grim expression and formal tone. “I cannot do other than I have concerning the boy. Jon is my blood.”

“I have given you my word I would not ask about him again, and I have not, my lord,” she said softly.

His jaw relaxed slightly and she imagined a momentary smile there once more. “No,” he said even more softly. “You have not. It is said that words are wind, my lady, but I have found yours to be considerably more than that.” 

She acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow of her head.

“You deserve a husband of whom the same may be said,” he added in a harder tone, but she did not think he was angry with her. “I cannot change what is done. But I give you my word I will bring no further dishonor upon you, and I will not allow anyone else to do so. You are the Lady of Winterfell. You are the mother of my son. And you are my wife.”

He spoke the words firmly, and while she had no doubt he meant what he said, the grim expression on his face gave her little comfort. He spoke his promises and declarations as a man might speak the words of the Night’s Watch. Benjen had recited that vow for her before he’d left for the Wall, and while it was filled with commitment and purpose and honor, she’d found it completely devoid of joy. Did her lord husband see marriage to her in the same light that his brother saw service to the Night’s Watch?

“I thank you, my lord,” she said softly. “I will endeavor to be a worthy Lady of Winterfell, and . . . I am sorry . . . if I am not the wife you would wish.”

The change that came over his face then was remarkable, and the full moon illuminated his features clearly for her as he appeared first stunned, then dismayed, and then distressed. She had rarely seen his feelings so clearly written upon that stoic face and thought he truly must have been caught off guard by her words.

“My lady! Catelyn! I . . .” he sputtered. He shook his head as if completely unable to find whatever words he sought. “You are a wife any man would wish,” he said finally. “Any man who felt otherwise would be a fool.”

As she looked at him, feeling almost as if she were seeing him for the first time, a cloud passed over the moon and cast his face into shadow. She shivered, suddenly colder without the warmth she’d seen in his gaze. _Warmth,_ she thought incredulously. For there was no other word for what she had seen there.

“You’re cold,” he said. “Come here.”

It was spoken almost like an order which usually made her bristle. But there was a tenderness that had not been in his voice before, or at least that she had not heard there, and she found herself stepping toward him. He opened his own thick fur cloak and wrapped it around her which necessitated her stepping into his arms—something she had not done before outside her bedchamber. She found she did not mind it in the least, and she was almost instantly warmer.

“Is this all right, my lady?” he asked, sounding concerned.

“Yes, my lord. Thank you.”

He was careful not to touch his face to her, not to make the embrace more intimate than it was. Undoubtedly, he too was aware they were standing in new territory. Yet, when he exhaled, she could feel his warm breath on her forehead just below the hem of her own hood, and it made her tremble.

“Are you still too cold? We should go in.”

“No,” she said too quickly, but she didn’t want to go in. She wanted to remain on this path that led nowhere in the arms of a husband who seemed warmer here in the snow than he ever had in her warm, cozy chambers.

“No one will speak to you of what occurred in the kitchen,” he said, sounding grim once more, although his arms tightened rather protectively around her. “I have seen to those involved, and they will not repeat their transgressions.”

“Ned!” she said, pulling back from him a bit. She barely noticed that she’d used his name in her distress. “I already shouted at them. Please don’t dismiss them. I don’t want them to . . .”

“I haven’t dismissed anyone, Catelyn,” he assured her. “I simply made it clear that any idle gossip which disturbs my lady wife will not be tolerated. Even less so, any disrespect toward you. I fear that in the long years since my lady mother’s death, some of our people have forgotten what it means to have a Lady of Winterfell. I shall take greater pains to remind them from now on.”

She bit her lip. “I am sorry I made a scene. I had not wished for you to hear of it.” She looked up at him and saw that his features were a bit clearer. The cloud must be moving away. “What did you hear, exactly?” she asked somewhat hesitantly.

“All of it,” he said flatly. “Tya came to find me.”

“Tya . . .” Catelyn repeated slowly. “But . . . she begged me not to say anything to you! She came to you?”

“Aye. It would seem she thought it best to tell me herself rather than let me hear of it elsewhere. She was so anxious at first that she could say little except ‘Lady Stark’ and I feared you’d been injured. Gradually, she gave me her tale, though.”

“I am sorry,” Catelyn repeated.

“You have no cause to be. And I hope that you will no longer be given cause to be angry. Although, if you are, I would ask that you come to me rather than getting yourself lost in the godswood. I would like to be given the opportunity to be angry on your behalf as I am your husband.”

Struck for a moment by the fact that he wanted to feel anything on her behalf, she almost missed what he’d said just previous to that. “Wait a moment,” she said suddenly, looking up at him in what was now full moonlight once more. “Why do you think I am lost?”

He laughed then. A full, deep laugh, full of joy and warmth. “Because you’re on Brandon’s Road.”

“What?” she asked him.

“Look about you, Cat,” he said, smiling, and the way her nickname slipped from his lips unbidden warmed her as much as his cloak or his arms. “We are standing on the widest path in all the godswood.”

“It isn’t a path,” she said. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”

“I know,” he said, looking at her with an actual teasing glint in his eye. “But you thought it did, didn’t you?”

Twisting her mouth, she nodded in admission of that fact.

“We are in the midst of the deepest growth of old sentinel trees in the godswood here. There are virtually no paths at all in this section, and if you wander into it unaware, it is easy to become quite turned around. But right in the center of it is this path. It is so large that most who are lost find it. Only their relief gives way to dismay when they realize it leads nowhere. It simply meanders from a thick grove of trees at one end to a second grove of trees at the other.” He smiled at her once more. “But you’ve already discovered that, haven’t you?”

She nodded again. “Why Brandon’s Road?” she asked, thinking of her husband’s brother—the man she was to have married.

“Well, it obviously is a path. Or was. It’s too wide and too deliberately laid out to be anything else. But over the years the trees have claimed most of its original course. Wherever it was meant to go once upon a time, it now is merely a fine place to view the full moon. It must be very old to have such old trees growing over it so Brandon the Builder is given credit for it, just as he is for Winterfell itself.”

“That’s a good story. And it is beautiful here. How did you know to find me in the godswood?”

He smiled. “I looked everywhere else first,” he admitted. “I know you have no love for this place.”

She frowned. “I am sorry, my lord,” she said. “I do not know your gods and they do not know me. I fear I shall never find the peace here that I find in a sept, but I will try to become as true a Northern lady as I can be.”

“I don’t want that,” he said, surprising her. “I want you to be the lady you are, Catelyn. You are more than I deserve, you know. I was not meant for . . . all of this. But I will endeavor to be a worthy lord and a good husband if you will allow me. You are a Tully born, my lady. And now a Tully and a Stark. I would not have you give up one to be the other. I would have my children know as much about Family, Duty, and Honor as their mother does.”

 _His children,_ she thought. _He said children. Not only his son. Not only Robb._ Standing there on an ancient path which shared the name of the man she’d once thought to marry, in the arms of the man she did marry, Catelyn felt oddly hopeful. She would like to have more children, and she thought she rather liked the idea that Eddard Stark would be their father.

He was looking at her carefully, and she recognized the softness in his eyes and the slight acceleration of his breathing. She had seen it before in her bedchamber. He wanted her. Yet, she also saw a tenderness there, and another type of yearning she had never seen in his face. She wondered if it were new or if she had only failed to recognize it before. She found her own breath coming a bit faster in response.

“My lord,” she said softly. “Ned . . . would you like to kiss me?”

“Very much, my lady,” he said huskily. He pushed back her hood, but she didn’t feel cold as he ran a hand over her hair. “You are beautiful, Cat,” he whispered.

Then his lips were on hers, and as she opened her own to meet them, she thought absurdly that this path to nowhere in the middle of the godswood might have led her to the most important destination she could find in Winterfell. For as she stood there in the moonlight, kissing her husband with abandon, Catelyn Stark felt warm. Truly warm.


End file.
